Rush on Able Danger and Clinton Legacy
Able Danger Sources Come Forward, Clinton Legacy Takes Another Beating
August 17, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is so delicious. All these doubting Thomases out there are saying, "Weeeeell, you know, this Able Danger guy is an anonymous source. I don't know. I don't want to be accused of being a kook. I gotta back off on this story." The source is no longer anonymous. New York Times headline: "Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists," and in another story in the New York Times, it was only yesterday that Bill Clinton is out there saying (impression), "I'll tell you what, if the Pentagon had told me what they knew about bin Laden, I'd have gone after that guy, fired into Afghanistan. I don't know if it would have affected 9/11, but it sure would have made it more complicated. I would have gone after bin Laden." But the New York Times sort of shoots down and gives another beating to the Clinton legacy: "State Department Says It Warned About Bin Laden in '96." (Laughing.) It's getting to the point now that you put a bag of excrement in front of Clinton and he'll step in it. Somebody is maneuvering things here, folks, in a delicious way. First off, Able Danger. "A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he has decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly." He did this because he says he can't believe what the chairman and the co-chairman of the 911 Commission are saying. "Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information. But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned. 'I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued,' Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001. He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. 'It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed,' he said." Chain of command? Who's the chain of command here? We need some names. The chain of command? The Secretary of defense was Cohen. Is that who we're talking about? It would seem logical. "A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to 'provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta.' 'And if these assertions are credible,' Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, 'the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger.'" Uh, Richard? I think you did get the information, at least the staff did. "Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving." We go to the audio sound bites now. Schaffer was on television Friday, the CBS Early Show, Hannah Storm was talking to him, first question, "There are new allegations of missed opportunities to prevent the 9/11 attacks. You are a member of Able Danger, you identified four of the 9/11 hijackers, including Atta. How much of a threat did you think he and his cell were at the time?"
SCHAFFER: Well, it was significant by the fact that we did discover these guys through essentially the advanced developing technology of the time. Through pattern analysis. We recognized their linkages and patterns of linkages to the Al-Qaeda leadership and that was what our primary concern was at the time. RUSH: "Now, when you tried to set up the three meetings with the FBI to share this information about the cell, those meetings were blocked by government lawyers. Why?" SCHAFFER: I'm not a lawyer and I wasn't in those meetings. What I can tell you is that because of my relationship with the FBI, at that moment in time, we were trying to find a way to bring the Special Operations Command folks together with the FBI folks here in Washington so they could discuss the potential impact of having these individuals in the United States. Part of the problem with that was the lawyers didn't allow us to properly go after either by intelligence collection or by allowing the FBI to go out to look at these guys because they were here legally, and there was a big issue regarding the fact that these four nationals were here in the United States doing things that were, in my judgment, questionable due to their linkages to the Al-Qaeda leadership, but because they were here legally again the lawyers really did not want us going after any information or dealing with them. RUSH: Let's not forget this. I don't know if Mr. Schaffer wants to go here or not, but let's not forget there was a memo from the then-US attorney Mary Jo White -- and Mary Jo White was the US attorney for the Southern District of New York at Manhattan -- all concerned here about the wall that existed that prevented law enforcement from sharing any information they got with the FBI or with the CIA. She was talking about the fact that this wall existed and it was going to be a big problem in solving terrorism, and this goes back to prior to when this Able Danger stuff is in action and taking place. So nobody wants to address this specifically about the wall. What appears to me is happening here is they're going to try to dump this on the Pentagon. Remember what I said about all this, folks. The political class in that town is going to circle the wagons to do what it can to protect itself, and they're going to blame a building for this. They're going to blame a five sided building for this and a couple people will get a slap on the wrist or slap on the hands, but it's obvious here that a commission put together to connect the dots chose not to even look at some of the dots and didn't connect some of its own. The next question from Hannah Storm was, "I want to get some comments of the letters of the September 11th Commission. They said that Able Danger, your unit there, did not turn out to be historically significant. They said that none of the documents that they requested about Able Danger that were turned over by the defense defendant referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers. Is it possible the defense department didn't turn over all the documents?" SCHAFFER: I believe it's very possible. I spoke to the officer recently who actually physically took two briefcase size packages of documents over to them. And I can tell you for a fact that was probably one-twentieth of the actual hard copy documents and probably -- none of the actual data, the 2.5 terabytes of data which was used as the backdrop to the project. So no, I don't believe they ever got all of the documents, but then again I don't think that they pressed properly to get all the documents. RUSH: Exactly. The documents were not presented to them and they weren't curious at the commission about all the documents -- 2.5 terabytes? That is not an insignificant number. Next question: "You could be putting your career in serious danger here by coming forward with these allegations. Why now? Why are you doing this?" SCHAFFER: To be honest with you we were working on some of the fixes. The Navy approached me earlier this year to ask me to assist them in putting back together some of the technology which was resident within Able Danger, again trying to bring back some capability which apparently is not either currently available to the Navy or widely available to DOD. That was why this all came up. We sought through Congressman Weldon some funding to actually bring us back. It was through discussions with him and his learning the story, him going to the 9/11 commissioners finding out that the Able Danger information had never been passed to them. That's how this all came up now. And the big question, "What's the bottom line, Colonel Shaffer? Who dropped the ball here?" SCHAFFER: Ma'am, I don't know. I support Congressman Weldon calling for investigations. I know DOD right now, from my discussions with them yesterday, spent the morning with DOD leadership going through this. I know they're trying to get to the bottom of this, and I do believe the administration wants to find out what the answers are here and really get to the bottom, and that's why I've come forward. I believe DOD is being very focused and very supportive of getting to the bottom of this. RUSH: Yeah, after the fact, once the whistle was blown. We've got a good old-fashioned whistle-blower here, folks, and let's just see how this whistle-blower is treated. Remember Colleen Rowley, FBI agent? She blew the whistle on the inability to connect the dots? She was made a heroine. In fact, she's going down to see Cindy Sheehan. She's going down there to the squatter's ditch to see the Cindy Sheehan crowd down there and she's also going to run for office -- and of course she made the cover. Wasn't the Person of the Year whistle-blowers on TIME Magazine? They had three of them on the cover and she was one of them. We've got a whistle-blower here, Anthony Shaffer. Let's just see what happens to him. But I tell you, there have been so many people changing their stories. I told you yesterday, folks, you knew there had to be something to this because when we first heard about Able Danger, members of the commission staff started acting like, 'Uh-oh, they're on to us," and they started running for the tall grass then they started changing their stories, then they came out and changed the story again. But the initial reaction, I mean if this is all a bunch of garbage, if it's all BS, your initial reaction, if you're up to speed on it, your reaction is, "Oh, we looked at that. These guys, there's nothing to it. We were exhaustive in our investigations." But they didn't act that way. They acted like they were caught and then they started scrambling and then they started spinning. Deborah Orin, New York Post, has found yet another memo from Mary Jo White warning the Clinton administration. BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Bill Clinton's legacy takes another beating the day after Bill Clinton says that if he'd have known about it, he'd have taken Afghanistan apart to find Osama bin Laden. "President Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was 'very dangerous' and could have 'deadly results,' according to a blistering memo just obtained by the [New York] Post." This is Deborah Orin writing today. "Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements. Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder. 'This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities,' wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee. 'The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism... can have deadly results.'" Meaning keeping this close to the vest, not ideological conservatism. Now, I know that there are a lot of hare-brained websites out there trying to say there was no wall and that everybody who is talking about the wall is lying about the wall, but here's Clinton's own appointed US attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan writing a memo to Jamie Gorelick complaining about the wall, and in this memo, spelling it out exactly as we have told you about it on this program. You can't compartmentalize this. You can't prevent law enforcement from learning what intelligence gathers, and vice-versa! This is going to lead to disastrous results. This is because the Clinton administration sought to pursue terrorists in court with grand juries and indictments rather than consider us to be at war. Clinton did not want anything like that. Clinton did not want to tackle big issues in big ways because he didn't want to find himself in a circumstance like Bush is in now. He didn't have the guts to take on big issues, but, oh, man, is he courageous after the fact! Oh, man, would I love to have this guy's spine, after the fact. (Doing impression) "I'll tell you what. If I'd have known that about bin Laden, I would have gone out there. I'd have fired every missile we got to get bin Laden, if I'd have just been told about him," and everybody is dumping on Jamie Gorelick here, but did anybody actually think she alone created this wall without any direction, without any permission, without any guidance, shall we say? Was Jamie Gorelick just, you know, a free agent over there at justice? Was she just roaming around being able to convince and create anything that she wanted? Back to Deborah Orin's piece: Mary Jo "White must have felt like Cassandra, foreseeing dangers that proved all too real while no one at Clinton's Justice Department would listen. Team Clinton put up the 'wall' in 1995 and it stayed up until after the 9/11 attacks. Questions about the 'wall' recently arose in regard to possible warnings from Able Danger, a pre-9/11 military-intelligence program, but the White memo makes clear that the issue was far, far broader. In theory, the 'wall' was supposed to avoid legal challenges to terror prosecutions. The problem was, as White and her team noted, only prosecutors familiar with a case or a cast of terror players might see the connections that could led to nabbing a suspect or foiling a plot. Justice honchos overruled White's plea — even though her team knew better than anyone else in law enforcement what the real risks were. White's team won a host of convictions — including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty. Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White's stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them." You've heard this about journalists: they have a story, they write the story, and then they go talk to the people? The story is written in advance, and they go try to put it together in the way they've already got it written in their heads, and anything that comes along that challenges their conception or their agenda gets thrown out? That's exactly what happened on this commission, folks. It's exactly what happened on this commission. This commission was not put together to actually find out what happened here. It was put together to whitewash it, blame it on a couple or three innocent people or a building or what have you, and then to make it look like we've learned so much, here's some recommendations to make sure it doesn't happen again. This commission, it appears, had no interest in finding out what really led to all of this because too many heads would roll in the political class. Too many Washington pros, too many Washington lifers, too many elite, upper-crust members of the political class in Washington would have been vulnerable. We can't have that! The Washington political class is going to circle the wagons around itself. Now, I know what you're asking, "What about Nixon, Rush? What about Nixon?" Well, you know, the Democrats play the game a little bit different than the Republicans do, but this is a different issue. You could make the case here that there would be Washington insiders on both sides of the political aisle here that might be facing some vulnerable challenges; it's circle-the-wagons time. "We'll make it look like we're going to town." The hearings themselves, the televised portion of the hearings were just a sham. They were part of the election process. That's what the Democrats were using them for, but everybody knew going in that if there was anybody really personally responsible for this, high up, it wasn't going to get blamed on them. "Yeah, we're going to get an FBI agent or two that didn't connect the dots. We're going to get a couple other people over there -- small fry, not part of the political class just, you know, civil service employees," but has anybody been fired over this? What does that tell you? Nobody's been fired over this, and in fact some have been promoted, and that's I think a telling fact about all of this. It's clear that there were all kinds of documents. Jamie Gorelick herself, why do you think she was on the commission instead of being called as a witness? So as to make sure that whatever it was that existed about the wall in the Clinton administration itself would be swept under the rug. No doubt about any of this. "It's hard to avoid the conclusion," Deborah Orin writes, "that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick. White has declined to discuss the matter. Gorelick didn't immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday. Mary Jo White wrote the memo after her earlier pleas against the wall were rejected. She enlisted the help of her bomb two team, prosecutors working on terror bombings like the '93 Twin Towers attack. They gave six pages of detailed reasons why it was a mistake to create too much of a wall between intelligence and prosecutions. Mary Joe White forwarded that analysis to Gorelick and added her own notes on the Clinton-era decision to keep prosecutors in the dark about intelligence investigations. She wrote, 'What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered, are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted upon information that reside in some file or other in some head or some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other. These can be disasters waiting to happen.'" Fast forward, Able Danger. "Disasters waiting to happen." Fast forward Able Danger.
You've heard now from Anthony Shaffer himself. His work was suppressed. Lawyers at the defense department said, "Shut it down! You can't share it," under the guise of, "Well, you know, we can't domestically spy on legal citizens. We can't do that." This is the same old lament with other law enforcement. Somebody's going to shoot you, well, we can't stop them until they do, and then we'll go after them. It's absurd, and average Americans are never going to understand this -- and that's why this commission didn't bring it up, because the fact is, average Americans do understand it. This is as easily understood as the easiest scandal to understand that's ever come down the pike. This is so easy to understand is why it had to be swept under the rug. Try this. "In August 2001, one month after the attacks, the FBI learned that two dangerous characters, future hijackers, might have arrived in the US, but didn't connect the dots to see that as a priority. August 2001, FBI headquarters failed to see the significance of the fact that the arrested 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, had taken flight lessons despite desperate bids by field agents to sound the alarm," and this guy, by the way, said, "I don't care how to take one of these things off or land it." He just wanted to know how to steer it! He goes to flight school, wants to know how to steer a 747; he doesn't care to learn how to take one off or land it. Red flag, anybody? Apparently not. Now, could some of these dots have been connected, absent the Gorelick wall. There's no way of really knowing but the 9/11 Commission should have examined the issue. They wanted no part of it, my friends, and that's why Gorelick was a commissioner. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, here's a reminder. Once again we're gonna deal a blow here to the Bill Clinton legacy effort. We're going to go back. The New York Times is saying that the information around 1996 did not define the Osama bin Laden Sudan opportunity. That's all part of the news again here today, too, because Clinton is out there saying, (doing impression) "If I'd have known about bin Laden, I'd have fired every missile we got. I would have taken him out. I'd have gone in there in Afghanistan a lot sooner than 9/11. It might not have stopped it, but I'd have done something." You know he said this all yesterday. So our buddy's at NewsMax have turned back the hands of time, as you will. They have a transcript from Madeleine Albright appearing with Tim Russert on Meet the Depressed. Here's the nut of it: Russert: "In May of 1996, under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, the Sudanese government asked bin Laden to leave, returned to Afghanistan permanently. Was it a mistake to let bin Laden leave Sudan or at least not apprehend him in Qatar on his way to Afghanistan?" Albright: "As I understand it, and I was ambassador to the UN at the time, was that basically we felt that he was too intricately involved with some of the activities in Sudan, which is a major issue for us. It was better to get him out of there." Ha! And don't forget now, Clinton said: (doing impression) "And I'm going to tell you what. I considered bin Laden a much bigger threat than Bush ever did. I want you people to listen to me one more time. I'm going to say this one more time. I considered bin Laden a far bigger threat than Bush ever did." He was offered bin Laden's head two or three times by the Sudanese government and turned it down, and that's what Albright is talking about here with Tim Russert. She says, "Obviously, in hindsight, one would wish that some other action had been taken, but for the most part, that was a decision made on the basis of information at that time, that he was playing the terrorist game there, and that there had in fact been terrorist activity. There was an attempt on President Mubarak's life that came out of that area. It's probably better to move bin Laden out. Russert: "Well, why not capture him, then? Why not apprehend him while he was refueling in Qatar?" Albright: "I can't answer that question." He didn't want to deal with it! New York Times today: "State Department Says It Warned About Bin Laden in '96 -- A state department analyst warned the Clinton administration in July '96 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven, as he sought to expand radical Islam." You just heard Madeleine Albright say, we had to get him out of Sudan because he was wreaking havoc there, big terrorism. No, the fact is they were told it would be even worse if he got to Afghanistan, and the Sudanese said do you want him before we let him go? And the Clinton twice, three times, said no. All the while Clinton's got the biggest spine after the fact of anybody I've ever seen. This guy's got a package, folks, after the fact, folks, let me tell you. (doing impression) "I considered bin Laden a far bigger threat than Bush ever did. If I'd have known about any of this I want you people to know I would have unleashed all the firepower in my power to go get this guy." We're dealing continually here with this administration more than psychobabble. I mean, it's sociopathic, folks, is what this is -- and what sweet justice, what sweet justice. For Clinton's own house organ, the New York Times, to come forth with the story that basically blows up his contention yesterday that he took bin Laden as a bigger threat than Bush ever did, and had he known about it, he'd have gotten bin Laden long before 9/11. Yes siree Bob. Well, 20/20 hindsight really helps out a lot here. Of course, it kind of dovetails with CNN and their groveling interview with Clinton last week, and they did a poll, "Who would you rather be president right now, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush?" A little viewer website poll or something that they did. A quick phone call here before we have to go, Matt in Odessa, Texas, I'm glad you called, sir, welcome. CALLER: Rush, mega west Texas Friday night lights football. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: It is an honor to speak to you. I've waited so long to talk to you. My main point and my main question is, when are we going to start seeing people that served in the Clinton administration start turning on each other, start pointing fingers? RUSH: I wouldn't hold my breath. If it hasn't happened now -- I'm glad you called and this is a good question, Matt. This is one of the things that has perplexed all of us watching this -- no, really, it has. When the first thing hit about Monica Lewinsky, here's Madeleine Albright and all the women in the White House, we believe our president, and then when it was found out he was lying, there was no -- what occurred during the Clinton administration is, in my lifetime, anyway, unprecedented. Not one whistle-blower, not one defector, not one. We were all wondering, "How can this be?" You know, look at how many. Richard Clarke! Look at how many people have tried to nail Bush from the Clinton administration, not one, and so to ask if anyone in the Clinton administration is going to end up pointing a finger if the heat gets too close to them, they all seem to take the fall for these people. Web Hubbell rolled over two or three times, did he not? Vince Foster, he killed himself. It's a mind-boggling thing. This is what's been responsible for the questions all these years, what do the Clintons have on these people? Because this is Washington. There are whistle-blowers everywhere. For no other reason than they write books about things and get rich. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You also have to understand this, folks, if somebody in the Clinton administration decided to come forward and blow the whistle and point fingers and say, "Yeah, this happened or that," do you realize what would happen the next day at dawn? This person would be sent to the gallows and would be hanged by a team of Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell, Aaron Brown, Wolf Blitzer, you take your pick. They'd have to draw lots to see which members of the media got to actually preside at the hanging of whatever whistle-blower comes out of the Clinton administration. And you know that a Clinton whistle-blower has got to know this. So I wouldn't look for this to happen, folks. END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Articles...
(NY Times: Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists) (NY Times: State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996) (NY Post: Deborah Orin: NY's Cassandra) (NewsMax: Clinton Warned After Giving up Bin Laden) (NewsMax.com: Clinton: I Would Have Attacked Bin Laden) (NewsMax: Albright: I Don't Know Why Clinton Turned Down Bin Laden Deal)
August 17, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is so delicious. All these doubting Thomases out there are saying, "Weeeeell, you know, this Able Danger guy is an anonymous source. I don't know. I don't want to be accused of being a kook. I gotta back off on this story." The source is no longer anonymous. New York Times headline: "Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists," and in another story in the New York Times, it was only yesterday that Bill Clinton is out there saying (impression), "I'll tell you what, if the Pentagon had told me what they knew about bin Laden, I'd have gone after that guy, fired into Afghanistan. I don't know if it would have affected 9/11, but it sure would have made it more complicated. I would have gone after bin Laden." But the New York Times sort of shoots down and gives another beating to the Clinton legacy: "State Department Says It Warned About Bin Laden in '96." (Laughing.) It's getting to the point now that you put a bag of excrement in front of Clinton and he'll step in it. Somebody is maneuvering things here, folks, in a delicious way. First off, Able Danger. "A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he has decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly." He did this because he says he can't believe what the chairman and the co-chairman of the 911 Commission are saying. "Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information. But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned. 'I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued,' Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001. He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. 'It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed,' he said." Chain of command? Who's the chain of command here? We need some names. The chain of command? The Secretary of defense was Cohen. Is that who we're talking about? It would seem logical. "A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to 'provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta.' 'And if these assertions are credible,' Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, 'the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger.'" Uh, Richard? I think you did get the information, at least the staff did. "Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving." We go to the audio sound bites now. Schaffer was on television Friday, the CBS Early Show, Hannah Storm was talking to him, first question, "There are new allegations of missed opportunities to prevent the 9/11 attacks. You are a member of Able Danger, you identified four of the 9/11 hijackers, including Atta. How much of a threat did you think he and his cell were at the time?"
SCHAFFER: Well, it was significant by the fact that we did discover these guys through essentially the advanced developing technology of the time. Through pattern analysis. We recognized their linkages and patterns of linkages to the Al-Qaeda leadership and that was what our primary concern was at the time. RUSH: "Now, when you tried to set up the three meetings with the FBI to share this information about the cell, those meetings were blocked by government lawyers. Why?" SCHAFFER: I'm not a lawyer and I wasn't in those meetings. What I can tell you is that because of my relationship with the FBI, at that moment in time, we were trying to find a way to bring the Special Operations Command folks together with the FBI folks here in Washington so they could discuss the potential impact of having these individuals in the United States. Part of the problem with that was the lawyers didn't allow us to properly go after either by intelligence collection or by allowing the FBI to go out to look at these guys because they were here legally, and there was a big issue regarding the fact that these four nationals were here in the United States doing things that were, in my judgment, questionable due to their linkages to the Al-Qaeda leadership, but because they were here legally again the lawyers really did not want us going after any information or dealing with them. RUSH: Let's not forget this. I don't know if Mr. Schaffer wants to go here or not, but let's not forget there was a memo from the then-US attorney Mary Jo White -- and Mary Jo White was the US attorney for the Southern District of New York at Manhattan -- all concerned here about the wall that existed that prevented law enforcement from sharing any information they got with the FBI or with the CIA. She was talking about the fact that this wall existed and it was going to be a big problem in solving terrorism, and this goes back to prior to when this Able Danger stuff is in action and taking place. So nobody wants to address this specifically about the wall. What appears to me is happening here is they're going to try to dump this on the Pentagon. Remember what I said about all this, folks. The political class in that town is going to circle the wagons to do what it can to protect itself, and they're going to blame a building for this. They're going to blame a five sided building for this and a couple people will get a slap on the wrist or slap on the hands, but it's obvious here that a commission put together to connect the dots chose not to even look at some of the dots and didn't connect some of its own. The next question from Hannah Storm was, "I want to get some comments of the letters of the September 11th Commission. They said that Able Danger, your unit there, did not turn out to be historically significant. They said that none of the documents that they requested about Able Danger that were turned over by the defense defendant referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers. Is it possible the defense department didn't turn over all the documents?" SCHAFFER: I believe it's very possible. I spoke to the officer recently who actually physically took two briefcase size packages of documents over to them. And I can tell you for a fact that was probably one-twentieth of the actual hard copy documents and probably -- none of the actual data, the 2.5 terabytes of data which was used as the backdrop to the project. So no, I don't believe they ever got all of the documents, but then again I don't think that they pressed properly to get all the documents. RUSH: Exactly. The documents were not presented to them and they weren't curious at the commission about all the documents -- 2.5 terabytes? That is not an insignificant number. Next question: "You could be putting your career in serious danger here by coming forward with these allegations. Why now? Why are you doing this?" SCHAFFER: To be honest with you we were working on some of the fixes. The Navy approached me earlier this year to ask me to assist them in putting back together some of the technology which was resident within Able Danger, again trying to bring back some capability which apparently is not either currently available to the Navy or widely available to DOD. That was why this all came up. We sought through Congressman Weldon some funding to actually bring us back. It was through discussions with him and his learning the story, him going to the 9/11 commissioners finding out that the Able Danger information had never been passed to them. That's how this all came up now. And the big question, "What's the bottom line, Colonel Shaffer? Who dropped the ball here?" SCHAFFER: Ma'am, I don't know. I support Congressman Weldon calling for investigations. I know DOD right now, from my discussions with them yesterday, spent the morning with DOD leadership going through this. I know they're trying to get to the bottom of this, and I do believe the administration wants to find out what the answers are here and really get to the bottom, and that's why I've come forward. I believe DOD is being very focused and very supportive of getting to the bottom of this. RUSH: Yeah, after the fact, once the whistle was blown. We've got a good old-fashioned whistle-blower here, folks, and let's just see how this whistle-blower is treated. Remember Colleen Rowley, FBI agent? She blew the whistle on the inability to connect the dots? She was made a heroine. In fact, she's going down to see Cindy Sheehan. She's going down there to the squatter's ditch to see the Cindy Sheehan crowd down there and she's also going to run for office -- and of course she made the cover. Wasn't the Person of the Year whistle-blowers on TIME Magazine? They had three of them on the cover and she was one of them. We've got a whistle-blower here, Anthony Shaffer. Let's just see what happens to him. But I tell you, there have been so many people changing their stories. I told you yesterday, folks, you knew there had to be something to this because when we first heard about Able Danger, members of the commission staff started acting like, 'Uh-oh, they're on to us," and they started running for the tall grass then they started changing their stories, then they came out and changed the story again. But the initial reaction, I mean if this is all a bunch of garbage, if it's all BS, your initial reaction, if you're up to speed on it, your reaction is, "Oh, we looked at that. These guys, there's nothing to it. We were exhaustive in our investigations." But they didn't act that way. They acted like they were caught and then they started scrambling and then they started spinning. Deborah Orin, New York Post, has found yet another memo from Mary Jo White warning the Clinton administration. BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Bill Clinton's legacy takes another beating the day after Bill Clinton says that if he'd have known about it, he'd have taken Afghanistan apart to find Osama bin Laden. "President Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was 'very dangerous' and could have 'deadly results,' according to a blistering memo just obtained by the [New York] Post." This is Deborah Orin writing today. "Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements. Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder. 'This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities,' wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee. 'The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism... can have deadly results.'" Meaning keeping this close to the vest, not ideological conservatism. Now, I know that there are a lot of hare-brained websites out there trying to say there was no wall and that everybody who is talking about the wall is lying about the wall, but here's Clinton's own appointed US attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan writing a memo to Jamie Gorelick complaining about the wall, and in this memo, spelling it out exactly as we have told you about it on this program. You can't compartmentalize this. You can't prevent law enforcement from learning what intelligence gathers, and vice-versa! This is going to lead to disastrous results. This is because the Clinton administration sought to pursue terrorists in court with grand juries and indictments rather than consider us to be at war. Clinton did not want anything like that. Clinton did not want to tackle big issues in big ways because he didn't want to find himself in a circumstance like Bush is in now. He didn't have the guts to take on big issues, but, oh, man, is he courageous after the fact! Oh, man, would I love to have this guy's spine, after the fact. (Doing impression) "I'll tell you what. If I'd have known that about bin Laden, I would have gone out there. I'd have fired every missile we got to get bin Laden, if I'd have just been told about him," and everybody is dumping on Jamie Gorelick here, but did anybody actually think she alone created this wall without any direction, without any permission, without any guidance, shall we say? Was Jamie Gorelick just, you know, a free agent over there at justice? Was she just roaming around being able to convince and create anything that she wanted? Back to Deborah Orin's piece: Mary Jo "White must have felt like Cassandra, foreseeing dangers that proved all too real while no one at Clinton's Justice Department would listen. Team Clinton put up the 'wall' in 1995 and it stayed up until after the 9/11 attacks. Questions about the 'wall' recently arose in regard to possible warnings from Able Danger, a pre-9/11 military-intelligence program, but the White memo makes clear that the issue was far, far broader. In theory, the 'wall' was supposed to avoid legal challenges to terror prosecutions. The problem was, as White and her team noted, only prosecutors familiar with a case or a cast of terror players might see the connections that could led to nabbing a suspect or foiling a plot. Justice honchos overruled White's plea — even though her team knew better than anyone else in law enforcement what the real risks were. White's team won a host of convictions — including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty. Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White's stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them." You've heard this about journalists: they have a story, they write the story, and then they go talk to the people? The story is written in advance, and they go try to put it together in the way they've already got it written in their heads, and anything that comes along that challenges their conception or their agenda gets thrown out? That's exactly what happened on this commission, folks. It's exactly what happened on this commission. This commission was not put together to actually find out what happened here. It was put together to whitewash it, blame it on a couple or three innocent people or a building or what have you, and then to make it look like we've learned so much, here's some recommendations to make sure it doesn't happen again. This commission, it appears, had no interest in finding out what really led to all of this because too many heads would roll in the political class. Too many Washington pros, too many Washington lifers, too many elite, upper-crust members of the political class in Washington would have been vulnerable. We can't have that! The Washington political class is going to circle the wagons around itself. Now, I know what you're asking, "What about Nixon, Rush? What about Nixon?" Well, you know, the Democrats play the game a little bit different than the Republicans do, but this is a different issue. You could make the case here that there would be Washington insiders on both sides of the political aisle here that might be facing some vulnerable challenges; it's circle-the-wagons time. "We'll make it look like we're going to town." The hearings themselves, the televised portion of the hearings were just a sham. They were part of the election process. That's what the Democrats were using them for, but everybody knew going in that if there was anybody really personally responsible for this, high up, it wasn't going to get blamed on them. "Yeah, we're going to get an FBI agent or two that didn't connect the dots. We're going to get a couple other people over there -- small fry, not part of the political class just, you know, civil service employees," but has anybody been fired over this? What does that tell you? Nobody's been fired over this, and in fact some have been promoted, and that's I think a telling fact about all of this. It's clear that there were all kinds of documents. Jamie Gorelick herself, why do you think she was on the commission instead of being called as a witness? So as to make sure that whatever it was that existed about the wall in the Clinton administration itself would be swept under the rug. No doubt about any of this. "It's hard to avoid the conclusion," Deborah Orin writes, "that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick. White has declined to discuss the matter. Gorelick didn't immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday. Mary Jo White wrote the memo after her earlier pleas against the wall were rejected. She enlisted the help of her bomb two team, prosecutors working on terror bombings like the '93 Twin Towers attack. They gave six pages of detailed reasons why it was a mistake to create too much of a wall between intelligence and prosecutions. Mary Joe White forwarded that analysis to Gorelick and added her own notes on the Clinton-era decision to keep prosecutors in the dark about intelligence investigations. She wrote, 'What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered, are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted upon information that reside in some file or other in some head or some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other. These can be disasters waiting to happen.'" Fast forward, Able Danger. "Disasters waiting to happen." Fast forward Able Danger.
You've heard now from Anthony Shaffer himself. His work was suppressed. Lawyers at the defense department said, "Shut it down! You can't share it," under the guise of, "Well, you know, we can't domestically spy on legal citizens. We can't do that." This is the same old lament with other law enforcement. Somebody's going to shoot you, well, we can't stop them until they do, and then we'll go after them. It's absurd, and average Americans are never going to understand this -- and that's why this commission didn't bring it up, because the fact is, average Americans do understand it. This is as easily understood as the easiest scandal to understand that's ever come down the pike. This is so easy to understand is why it had to be swept under the rug. Try this. "In August 2001, one month after the attacks, the FBI learned that two dangerous characters, future hijackers, might have arrived in the US, but didn't connect the dots to see that as a priority. August 2001, FBI headquarters failed to see the significance of the fact that the arrested 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, had taken flight lessons despite desperate bids by field agents to sound the alarm," and this guy, by the way, said, "I don't care how to take one of these things off or land it." He just wanted to know how to steer it! He goes to flight school, wants to know how to steer a 747; he doesn't care to learn how to take one off or land it. Red flag, anybody? Apparently not. Now, could some of these dots have been connected, absent the Gorelick wall. There's no way of really knowing but the 9/11 Commission should have examined the issue. They wanted no part of it, my friends, and that's why Gorelick was a commissioner. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, here's a reminder. Once again we're gonna deal a blow here to the Bill Clinton legacy effort. We're going to go back. The New York Times is saying that the information around 1996 did not define the Osama bin Laden Sudan opportunity. That's all part of the news again here today, too, because Clinton is out there saying, (doing impression) "If I'd have known about bin Laden, I'd have fired every missile we got. I would have taken him out. I'd have gone in there in Afghanistan a lot sooner than 9/11. It might not have stopped it, but I'd have done something." You know he said this all yesterday. So our buddy's at NewsMax have turned back the hands of time, as you will. They have a transcript from Madeleine Albright appearing with Tim Russert on Meet the Depressed. Here's the nut of it: Russert: "In May of 1996, under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, the Sudanese government asked bin Laden to leave, returned to Afghanistan permanently. Was it a mistake to let bin Laden leave Sudan or at least not apprehend him in Qatar on his way to Afghanistan?" Albright: "As I understand it, and I was ambassador to the UN at the time, was that basically we felt that he was too intricately involved with some of the activities in Sudan, which is a major issue for us. It was better to get him out of there." Ha! And don't forget now, Clinton said: (doing impression) "And I'm going to tell you what. I considered bin Laden a much bigger threat than Bush ever did. I want you people to listen to me one more time. I'm going to say this one more time. I considered bin Laden a far bigger threat than Bush ever did." He was offered bin Laden's head two or three times by the Sudanese government and turned it down, and that's what Albright is talking about here with Tim Russert. She says, "Obviously, in hindsight, one would wish that some other action had been taken, but for the most part, that was a decision made on the basis of information at that time, that he was playing the terrorist game there, and that there had in fact been terrorist activity. There was an attempt on President Mubarak's life that came out of that area. It's probably better to move bin Laden out. Russert: "Well, why not capture him, then? Why not apprehend him while he was refueling in Qatar?" Albright: "I can't answer that question." He didn't want to deal with it! New York Times today: "State Department Says It Warned About Bin Laden in '96 -- A state department analyst warned the Clinton administration in July '96 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven, as he sought to expand radical Islam." You just heard Madeleine Albright say, we had to get him out of Sudan because he was wreaking havoc there, big terrorism. No, the fact is they were told it would be even worse if he got to Afghanistan, and the Sudanese said do you want him before we let him go? And the Clinton twice, three times, said no. All the while Clinton's got the biggest spine after the fact of anybody I've ever seen. This guy's got a package, folks, after the fact, folks, let me tell you. (doing impression) "I considered bin Laden a far bigger threat than Bush ever did. If I'd have known about any of this I want you people to know I would have unleashed all the firepower in my power to go get this guy." We're dealing continually here with this administration more than psychobabble. I mean, it's sociopathic, folks, is what this is -- and what sweet justice, what sweet justice. For Clinton's own house organ, the New York Times, to come forth with the story that basically blows up his contention yesterday that he took bin Laden as a bigger threat than Bush ever did, and had he known about it, he'd have gotten bin Laden long before 9/11. Yes siree Bob. Well, 20/20 hindsight really helps out a lot here. Of course, it kind of dovetails with CNN and their groveling interview with Clinton last week, and they did a poll, "Who would you rather be president right now, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush?" A little viewer website poll or something that they did. A quick phone call here before we have to go, Matt in Odessa, Texas, I'm glad you called, sir, welcome. CALLER: Rush, mega west Texas Friday night lights football. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: It is an honor to speak to you. I've waited so long to talk to you. My main point and my main question is, when are we going to start seeing people that served in the Clinton administration start turning on each other, start pointing fingers? RUSH: I wouldn't hold my breath. If it hasn't happened now -- I'm glad you called and this is a good question, Matt. This is one of the things that has perplexed all of us watching this -- no, really, it has. When the first thing hit about Monica Lewinsky, here's Madeleine Albright and all the women in the White House, we believe our president, and then when it was found out he was lying, there was no -- what occurred during the Clinton administration is, in my lifetime, anyway, unprecedented. Not one whistle-blower, not one defector, not one. We were all wondering, "How can this be?" You know, look at how many. Richard Clarke! Look at how many people have tried to nail Bush from the Clinton administration, not one, and so to ask if anyone in the Clinton administration is going to end up pointing a finger if the heat gets too close to them, they all seem to take the fall for these people. Web Hubbell rolled over two or three times, did he not? Vince Foster, he killed himself. It's a mind-boggling thing. This is what's been responsible for the questions all these years, what do the Clintons have on these people? Because this is Washington. There are whistle-blowers everywhere. For no other reason than they write books about things and get rich. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You also have to understand this, folks, if somebody in the Clinton administration decided to come forward and blow the whistle and point fingers and say, "Yeah, this happened or that," do you realize what would happen the next day at dawn? This person would be sent to the gallows and would be hanged by a team of Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell, Aaron Brown, Wolf Blitzer, you take your pick. They'd have to draw lots to see which members of the media got to actually preside at the hanging of whatever whistle-blower comes out of the Clinton administration. And you know that a Clinton whistle-blower has got to know this. So I wouldn't look for this to happen, folks. END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Articles...
(NY Times: Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists) (NY Times: State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996) (NY Post: Deborah Orin: NY's Cassandra) (NewsMax: Clinton Warned After Giving up Bin Laden) (NewsMax.com: Clinton: I Would Have Attacked Bin Laden) (NewsMax: Albright: I Don't Know Why Clinton Turned Down Bin Laden Deal)
posted by Doug at 1:45 AM
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